Why do more women than men have Alzheimer's disease?

Presenter(s):

Gillian Einstein, PhD, Professor of Psychology, University of Toronto;  Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women's Brain Health and Aging; Adjunct Scientist, Rotman Research Institute; Guest Professor of Gender & Health, Linköping University, Sweden; Program Lead, Women, Sex, Gender, & Dementia Program—Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration and Aging (CCNA) 

Gillian Einstein is The Wilfred and Joyce Posluns Chair in Women’s Brain Health and Aging, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto and Guest Professor of Gender and Health at Linköping University in Linköping, Sweden. She is an Adjunct Scientist at Women’s College Research Institute and at the Rotman Research Institute in Toronto. She is a board member of the International Gender Medicine Society, Chair of the Canadian Institutes of Health’s Institute of Gender and Health Advisory Board, and Founder of the Canadian Organization of Gender and Sex (COGS) Research. She is Lead of the Women, Sex, Gender, and Dementia cross-cutting program of the Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration and Aging. 

Dr. Einstein has served as a temporary advisor for the World Health Organization on Female Genital Circumcision/mutilation/cutting (FGC) and has numerous honours such as: Named one of 20 Canadian Brain Research Stars, Brain Canada; The May Cohen Lecture in Women’s Health; Invited Member, CIHR College of Reviewers; Lawrence & Nancy Golden Memorial Lectureship in Mind-Body Medicine. She has also been recognized and profiled as a Leader in Women’s Health in Ontario by the Ontario Women’s Health Network and as a feminist voice in Psychology; Profiled in Psychology’s Feminist Voices. Her research is funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Alzheimer’s Society Canada, and the Ontario Brain Institute. Her broader interests encompass memory, the long term effects of hormone treatment, and the bridge between our scientific understanding of the nervous system and larger concerns having to do with self, identity, feminism, and the nature of science. She has published on Alzheimer disease, vision, sex differences, Female Genital Cutting, and estrogens’ effects on aging, pain, sleep, memory and mood. Her current research is on the effects of ovarian removal on women’s memory and brains. She is also interested in cognition in trans-individuals and how different cultures shape the nervous system. The overarching question of this research is: How do both sex and gender mediate women’s brain health? 
 

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